SPY HUNT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24838, 11 February 1942, Page 5

SPY HUNT

AXIS AGENTS IN AUSTRALIA INFORMATION FOR ENEMY SHORT-WAVE RADIO THEORY (Rec 630 p.m.) CANBERRA, Feb. 10. The monitoring of enemy broadcasts has now been established to the Government's satisfaction. Berlin as well as Tokio, has been making use in broadcasts of information gathered by spies within Australia and sent out by short-wave radio. The searcher the enemy agents responsible has been m--6 The 6 leakage of information which has been used by Tokio and Berlin radios is not in itself so important as the implication that the enemy may be receiving other information—for instance, vital shipping movements—which it can use for strategical purP °One theory is that German and Italian agents were, until December using Japan's neutrality as a channel to get information out of Australia, and are now making wireless their instrument.

Conflicting views of the likelihood of information being sent from Australia to Japan by means of a secret radio transmitter have been expressed by wireless experts. Some consider that since countries at war maintained a radio-listening system, any unauthorised transmitter" would be promptly heard and tracked down with direc-tion-finders. Others hold that this would be extremely difficult, especially in the case of a short-wave station operating in a vast country like AusA finding that it was not established that there had been any leakages, either directly or indirectly, from New Zealand of information as to the movements .of shipping, but that it was impossible to be sure that no such leakages had taken place, was recorded in the report of a commission set up by the New Zealand Government to investigate an alleged leakage of information and the circumstances surrounding the sinking by German raiders in 1940 of certain ships. The report said that a great deal of evidence was taken as to the possibility of the existence in New Zealand of illicit and undetected wireless-trans-mitting apparatus, and the possibility of its use so as to assist the enemy. " It is not in the public interest to risk telling the enemy exactly what precautions have been taken and are being taken in this connection, but it should be recorded that it has been shown to us that 'the authorities have been, for a long time, alive to this possibility," the commission's report said.